Today's project was to put on the boiler cabinet. Not something we wanted on display in the new kitchen. This was a tougher job than initially thought.
Unlike the other wall cabinets, the boiler one wasn't an assemble by number job. Instead, its a "here's a bunch of panels, have fun" job. Added to that, since the boiler was already in place, attaching the frame to the wall also presented a challenge.
So first, and most important was measurements, this all centered around the door, which I didn't want to cut down as I'd lose the smooth painted edges. So I had a boiler and a 600mm wide cabinet to build around.
The first piece to go on was the outside cladding, which in this case was also structural. This piece would need to be fixed to the wall using plugs and long screws as it would hold both the frame and the cabinet door. The depth also needed to be sufficient to allow the door hinges to fit but not stick out too far to interfere with our worktop space. And finally, I wanted to mount it as high as possible to allow maximum space underneath - challenging with a sloping ceiling.
The second piece of structure was a 38mm x 63mm piece of timber to hold the cabinet to the wall on the other side. There was just enough space to right of the water pipes to allow for this bracing.
Everything had to be cut to length in my outside workshop. The key here is picking which edges were to be visible and making sure the smooth factory edges faced outwards.
Outside, inside and bottom panels now installed.
Then came the top panel and outside cladding. The top left corner had to use special corner braces as there was no other way to fix it on.
Next went the pelmet at the bottom.
A complication came with the hinges. The soft close ones were far too big to fit in the cabinet. The alternative was to mount the door on the other side, but as it was 600mm wide, you would need to be a contortionist to access the boiler and I had no clue how to get the screws in place. I elected to go with the el-cheapo non-soft close hinges - how often do you access your boiler anyway?
The little bit of plastic is a jig for finding the right spot to drill all the holes.
The added complication was the opening of the boiler control panel door - right where the hinge was supposed to go. As usual, there is a special tool for that .. hello Amazon. The tool in question is a Forstner bit - 35mm in this case - which clears out space for the hinge cup. In all, not a difficult task - just make sure not to go all the way through the cabinet or the concealed hinge won't be well concealed.
And with the door now in place.
The slightly adjusted hinge location.
Finally, on went the cornice on the top to finish things off. As could be expected, this was also not the easiest task. The combination of the sloping ceiling and sloping cornice meant that this involved lots of trial and error with a bevel (angle gauge) and Dremel with a sanding attachment. Eventually however we got there.
I'd put this down as a more difficult task for the average do-it-yourselfer since it essentially involved building a cabinet from scratch. However, like most things, I'm sure it becomes easier with practice. Hopefully, I don't have to do it again for a little while however.
The only thing left to do here is box in the top part of the piping and build a removable front plate to cover the piping the bottom. All in future posts I'm afraid.
